


Waking the Dead

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Series: Rare Ships Creation Challenge [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Poe Inspired, Purgatory, Rare Ships Creations Challenge, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 07:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7524661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannah goes to Purgatory to investigate an idea she had.  She runs into Benny, who offers to guide her through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking the Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [posingasme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/gifts).



> Created for the Rare Ships Creation Challenge: http://rareshipcreationschallenge.tumblr.com/  
> Also posted on my Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/rodiniaorzetalthepenquin
> 
> Inspired by the poem "The Sleeper" by Edgar Allan Poe

_At midnight, in the month of June,_  
_I stand beneath the mystic moon._  
_An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,_  
_Exhales from out her golden rim,_

Standing at the grave, knife in one hand, Hannah looked around to make sure no one had found her. The graveyard was eerily quiet in the early summer moonlight, and a light fog had crept in. Digging out the grave provided a lot of time to remember him, the man who had an angel desecrating a grave. She wondered why Castiel had never offered to try this. Maybe he had, and Benny didn’t think he had enough to live for, then.

\-------------------------------------------- 

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. There were doors from Purgatory into Hell, to the Earth… but none to Heaven. The recent experience with Metatron proved how useful a back door could be. And, like a noodleloaf, Hannah had gone to see if one could be established herself.

She’d been there only a few minutes when she was attacked the first time. It wasn’t much of an attack, but Castiel had told her that angels attracted a great deal of attention in Purgatory. She didn’t want to exhaust herself too badly, but she also needed to stay as long as she could.

She’d found a promising spot, where the boundary was thin to begin with, and made a note of it. The next step was to make sure it was far enough from the entrance to Hell, and to examine both that entrance and the seam between Purgatory and Earth, to see if she could figure out how to create it. Castiel had done his best to give her the location of the Earth seam, but without good landmarks, Hannah was still going to have to search.

She didn’t see the vampire behind her until too late. The two in front of her and the ones on either side, yes, but she’d missed the one behind her until she felt something hit her back. She turned and saw one headless vampire falling to the ground while another stood with his weapon lowered and his other hand out. “What’s an angel doing in Purgatory?”

“Who’s asking?” He seemed different from the others here, but this was no place to trust easily.

The vampire moved slowly and carefully as he put away his blade. “My name’s Benny. I’ve seen your kind in here before. Made a couple real good friends then, thought I’d come check out the new one.”

Hannah was still cautious, but he didn’t seem to mean her any harm. “Do you know any ways out of Purgatory?”

“Two, but neither one much use to you… unless you wanna sneak into Hell, I guess. Can’t imagine why an angel would want to cut through Purgatory to get to Earth, and that’s where the other one leads.”

“Do they work?”

“Of course they work. Caught a ride to Earth once myself, and came back here to rescue a guy who’d used the Hell gate.”

“You’re Benny. Of course. The one who traveled with Castiel in here!” Hannah smiled and relaxed. “I’m Hannah. Castiel is my friend. I’m looking to investigate the gateways. Can you take me to them?”

\-------------------------------------------- 

_Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!_  
_Strange, above all, thy length of tress,_  
_And this all solemn silentness!_

The heavily decayed corpse she found looked nothing like the person she remembered, the person she’d come to restore. It wasn’t quite a skeleton, with flesh still clinging to the bones in some places. There was none of the warmth in it, and the rotted clothes the Winchesters had buried him in barely resembled the old-fashioned getup from Purgatory.

\-------------------------------------------- 

Benny chopped the head off the last Leviathan to attack them. “Where we goin’ first, Hell or Earth?”

Hannah considered while she wiped off her sword, taken from a werewolf. She preferred the elegance of her angel blade, but sometimes, bigger really was better. “Hell. If I learn what I need, I’m not coming back through from Earth.”

“All right, then. You actually gonna go through the gate to Hell?” Benny shot her a concerned look as he started walking.

“I won’t be in there very long, and I’m not going very far. Just enough to where I can examine Hell’s side of the gate.” Hannah followed Benny. “If I were planning on assaulting Hell, I wouldn’t have come alone.”

“Probably shoulda brought someone to watch your back while you did whatever it is you’re plannin’ on doing. Never been there, but Dean said Hell was no joke, and Castiel had some pretty nasty stories about his trips down.” Benny sniffed the air and changed his direction slightly. “So what’s your story with Castiel?”

“Not really much of a story. Metatron tricked Castiel into helping him do a spell to kick the angels out of Heaven, I helped him build the army to retake it, and at the last minute Castiel chose the Winchesters over his army. I don’t understand his loyalty to them. Sam’s an abomination and Dean may be Heaven’s Righteous Man, but he’s a complete ass.”

“Dean’s a good guy. Not Sam’s biggest fan myself, but abomination seems a little much, don’t it? No one Dean and Cas love that much can be all bad.”

“Oh, Sam seems like a decent enough person for what he is, but he’s got demon blood in him. Therefore, he’s an abomination. The boy with the demon blood. If Cas were still human, I’d understand, but for an angel to associate with an abomination is a little weird. Still going with Dean being an ass, though. He killed a Reaper who was under our protection, for no reason other than because he could. And the way he was treating Cas?” Hannah sighed. “Doesn’t matter now, Dean’s become a demon.”

“How’d that happen?”

“It’s a long story that I only know about half of. He bore the Mark of Cain. Have you heard of that?”

“Only from where my mama made me memorize the Bible.”

“When you die while bearing it, it makes you a demon. I don’t know how or why he had it, but when Metatron killed him…”

“Cas and Sam okay?”

“Cas is dying because his stolen grace is burning him from the inside out. His grace was stolen from him to fuel Metatron’s spell, and he stole the grace of an angel who tried to kill him. I don’t know about Sam. Cas won’t give up the stolen grace and live as a human again because he thinks Sam needs him to track down and cure Dean, so to be perfectly honest, I really don’t care if Sam’s okay.”

\-------------------------------------------- 

_The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,_  
_Which is enduring, so be deep!_  
_Heaven have her in its sacred keep!_  
_This chamber changed for one more holy,_  
_This bed for one more melancholy,_

Hannah wasn’t normally one for this kind of thing. What’s dead should stay dead, unless a miracle was ordered by Heaven. But if she was the one in charge now, then unless God came back, there was no reason why she couldn’t order a miracle. Benny had genuinely changed, and he deserved a second chance. Monsters simply weren’t supposed to go into Purgatory and become good people, but Benny had found a way.

\-------------------------------------------- 

“Here we are.” Benny pointed to the doorway. “Purgatory to Hell isn’t exactly a popular trip… monsters who get caught on the other side get tortured. So this side should remain pretty clear.”

“All right. I hope to be only a few minutes, but it’ll depend on how much attention I draw on the other side. Angels in Hell are even worse than angels in Purgatory.” Hannah drew her angel blade. Against demons, the holy power stored inside would make it far more useful than the bone sword.

Benny pulled his blade. “I’m comin’ in with you. Watch your back while you do whatever it is you’re doin’.”

“I can handle myself, Benny.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed that. We wouldn’t’a got here if you couldn’t. Just hate the thought of anything happening to you. I’m not afraid of no demons, and if I go in with you, saves me the trouble of trying to figure out how long is too long and you need a rescue. Short of locking yourself in, you can’t stop me from coming with you, so you may as well just accept it.”

Hannah smiled and nodded. She liked this guy. It wasn’t long until she was grateful for his stubbornness, either, as there were guards posted on the Hell side of the door. Benny helped her take them out, and held off the first responders to the alarm while Hannah did what she came to do.

\-------------------------------------------- 

_For her may some tall vault unfold—_  
_Some vault that oft hath flung its black_  
_And wingéd pannels fluttering back,_  
_Triumphant, o’er the crested palls_  
_Of her grand family funerals—_  
_Some sepulchre, remote, alone,_  
_Against whose portals she hath thrown,_  
_In childhood, many an idle stone—_  
_Some tomb from out whose sounding door_  
_She ne’er shall force an echo more,_  
_Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!_  
_It was the dead who groaned within._

As she dug, she wondered if Benny had ever had a funeral. The Winchesters wouldn’t have given him one. The nest that killed him certainly wouldn’t have. And with no body to bury, would his family have given him one after his human death? Funerals fascinated Hannah. It didn’t matter to the souls what happened to the flesh when they were done using it. God could restore a decomposed or burned corpse as easily as a fresh one if he so chose. And yet humans had these elaborate rituals regarding the dead flesh. Cemeteries made sense – keep all the decay in one place so that the ground was clean for agriculture elsewhere. But the way humans treated them – visiting graves, leaving flowers, forbidding children from playing or making much noise – Hannah was utterly baffled. The dead were dead. They weren’t going to rise up because a little girl threw a rock at the door to a crypt. Even this, having dug up a grave and preparing to raise a single chosen corpse, none of the rest of the dead would even notice.

\-------------------------------------------- 

The trip to the Earth portal was longer than Benny had expected based on his experience with Sam, but Hannah figured the angel being around was the cause. More frequent attacks by bigger groups. She was almost sorry to find herself standing at the seam. “You used this once? How?”

“Caught a ride with Dean. Humans and angels can use it. Monsters can’t. But if the monster’s soul or whatever it is I am is in a human, the human can take it back to the corpse and do a spell to rebind the two. Probably a monster could do the same with an angel to go through your gate to Heaven. Didn’t need it to get into Hell. May not need it to get into Heaven, since pure souls can exist there just fine. Something for you to think about before you make the call on creating your gate.”

“That is an important consideration. But demons can’t get into Purgatory, or they’d have followed us. I don’t know. I’ll think about it.” Hannah got as close as she could to the seam without letting it suck her in. “How do I get you inside me?”

“Come again?”

“To take you with me when I leave. You don’t belong in Purgatory, Benny. You deserve better. I’d like to take you back to Earth.”

“Dean shoulda burned my bones after I got Sam back out to him. There’d be nothing to bind me, I’d just come right back.”

“I’m an angel. I can work around that.”

“Even if my bones are there, or you can make new ones for me or whatever, I don’t belong up there, Hannah. I tried, and I just never fit in. I can’t go back.”

“You didn’t fit in because you were a vampire who refused to be a monster. Benny, I can bring you back to life. Make you human again. Live the rest of what would have been your natural life, and then come to me in Heaven.”

Benny stared at Hannah. “You can… you won’t get in trouble for it?”

“There’s not really anyone to get in trouble with.” Hannah reached out and gently stroked Benny’s face. “You could help Castiel and Sam find Dean. Sam has a cure for demons, that he intends to use. Save Dean, maybe save Castiel. And I could…”

Benny nodded, pulling Hannah in for a kiss. “There’s a spell. Let me teach you how to get me out, first.”

\-------------------------------------------- 

The spell was simple, and Hannah watched the golden light stream from her arm into the old bones. When Benny stepped out, he looked at himself critically. “Thought you were gonna make me human, Hannah. Wouldn’t have agreed to come back this way.”

“I am. It was just safer to do it in two steps, so the spellwork didn’t interfere with each other.” Hannah stepped in, breathing gently into Benny’s mouth. She pulled back after another kiss. “Better?”

“Much. Thank you.”

“Come on, let’s get you to Castiel.”


End file.
